


Meeting the Evans Family

by FloreatCastellum



Series: Marauder Moments [4]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Meeting the Parents
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-09
Updated: 2020-07-09
Packaged: 2021-03-04 18:35:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,133
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25170982
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FloreatCastellum/pseuds/FloreatCastellum
Summary: James ventures to Cokeworth with a bunch of flowers, conjured at the last minute after a hasty prompt by his mother.
Relationships: James Potter/Lily Evans Potter
Series: Marauder Moments [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1474679
Comments: 10
Kudos: 124





	Meeting the Evans Family

‘You brought flowers,’ she said approvingly, glancing down at the bouquet of tulips. ‘Smart move; my mum’s really into flowers.’

‘Not as stupid as I look, am I?’ he said smugly.

‘How could you be?’ she quipped back.

‘Merlin, you’re so mean… I love it.’

She hushed him, grinning, then took his hand. ‘This way,’ she said, and she began to lead him through Cokeworth. James had told her that he was perfectly happy to find his own way to her parents’ home, as she had done with his, but Lily had pointed out that Cokeworth was far bigger than Godric’s Hollow, and there was a significant chance he would get lost and end up down near Spinners End.

What will happen to me down there? he had written. Need I remind you how incredibly brave and good at dueling I am?

Well you might run into SS for one thing, Lily had replied.

The idea sounded appealing to James, subtly letting Snivellous know that it really was serious now he was meeting the parents, that he should just give up staring after Lily all the time, but he also appreciated that it probably wouldn’t be a good look if Aurors turned up and arrested him, whether or not it was in self-defence, on the day he was due to meet Mr and Mrs Evans.

So he had replied, fair point, and dutifully apparated to the secluded little spot Lily had described, on a deserted road that seemed to lead to some vast kind of factory or power station, great chimneys reaching up into the sky. On this spring Saturday morning, however, they were still.

‘Can you see why I was so charmed by Godric’s Hollow?’ she asked, blushing slightly as they walked into the town.

‘What?’ he said distractedly. They had just passed a garage, where a gleaming motorbike was being worked on by a man in overalls - the kind of motorbike he and Sirius so often admired in Muggle London or in the magazines Sirius picked up. ‘What d’you mean?’

‘Well, it’s not very pretty,’ she said awkwardly. ‘The whole place was built around the pits, and then the powerplant later. Doesn’t exactly have the old world charm of-’

‘It has its charm,’ he assured her, looking around at the stone terraced houses. ‘Bit more going on here, isn’t there?’

‘If you say so,’ she laughed.

She seemed to be leading him higher and higher, up steep pavements chalked with hopscotch patterns alongside cobbled roads, a large brick viaduct overhead, and the further they got from the road to the vast power plant and the canals, the larger the houses seemed to become, the more potted flowers appeared outside the doors. Eventually, their route led them to houses that were non longer terraced, flanked by back alleys, but had their own gardens and space. They were older looking, but in, as Lily had put it, a charming way.

‘Here we are,’ she said, and she gave him a bracing smile. ‘Ready?’ They stood outside a finely built brick house, the front garden an explosion of colour with packed flowerbeds and potted agapunthus.

For perhaps the first time in his life, his hand leapt to his hair not to mess it up further, but to flatten it. He briefly wondered if he should have listened to his father. ‘Yeah, ‘course,’ he said easily.

Lily did not knock on the door, but pulled a key from her pocket and opened it herself. ‘Hello?’ she called as they stepped over the threshold.

‘Hello?’ someone called back. A thin, blonde woman hurried in, beaming, wiping her hands on her apron. ‘Hello, hello! You must James-’

‘Hello, Mrs Evans,’ he said, hoping his smile was polite and humble. ‘Er, these are for you-’

‘Oh! How lovely - they’re beautiful-’

As she was fussing over them, a tall man with Lily’s dark red hair came striding in - not, James noticed uncomfortably, as enthusiastically as his wife, but he smiled all the same and shook James’s hand as Mrs Evans took the flowers.

‘Pleased to meet you - James, was it?’

‘That’s right, Mr Evans - pleased to meet you, too.’

‘Have you seen these, David?’ Mrs Evans said, holding up the flowers Mr Evans could not have possibly missed. ‘Wasn’t I just saying the other day the sitting room needed brightening up?’

‘Where’s Tuney?’ he heard Lily say.

‘She’s gone out,’ Mr Evans replied evasively.

‘She was here this morning-’

‘I must put these in water,’ Mrs Evans was saying happily, ‘what a nice gesture-’

‘Oh, it’s nothing,’ James said humbly, ‘really.’ It really was nothing; he had conjured them up moments before he left on his mother’s last minute prompting.

‘Come in, come in; let me take your coat-’

The house was very clean and well kept, pops of orange and leafy plants brightened the place up in a very modern style, and James was led through to a sitting-cum-dining room.

Just as at his own parents’ house, they sat down for food, though Mrs Evans had prepared it all and laid it out perfectly for his arrival, with far less chaos than was in his house.

There was an awkward sort of silence at first, just the clanking of the serving spoon against plates as Mrs Evans dished up dover sole and salad. ‘I’ve got an Artic roll for afters,’ she said brightly.

‘Sounds lovely, Mrs Evans,’ he said, though he didn’t have a clue what an Artic roll was.

Mr Evans took a heavy sort of breath and said, ‘yes, I’m sorry Petunia couldn’t join us… she…’

‘She’s just seeing a friend,’ said Mrs Evans chirpily, sitting down herself.

‘I’m sure I’ll have plenty of other opportunities to meet her,’ said James.

Mr Evans grunted, and they started to eat, that awkward silence descending again. His head throbbing with the effort of trying to think of something to say, and sensing that Mr Evans was the key here, James swallowed and said casually, ‘Lily said that you’re the Headmaster of a primary school, Mr Evans.’

He nodded. ‘Cokeworth Junior School, that’s right.’

‘I find them fascinating - Lily was telling my parents all about it.’

‘Aren’t there little magical primary schools?’ Mr Evans asked. ‘For the, what did you call them, poppet?’

‘Purebloods,’ said Lily.

‘Yes - er, proper magical-’

‘I’m a proper magical person, Dad!’ protested Lily.

‘Yes, yes, I know - but you know what I mean,’ he said impatiently.

‘No, there aren’t, Mr Evans,’ said James. ‘There’s not really enough of us. I think some people who marry muggles or muggleborns sometimes send their children to magical primary schools, but it can be hard to hid accidental magic-’

‘Oh, yes, well, we know all about that,’ said Mrs Evans darkly, though she was smiling at Lily. ‘Do you know, I used to tell her not to do it? It frightened me. Seems so silly now, I should have encouraged it, if anything.’

‘Well, it can lead to difficult questions,’ said James diplomatically. ‘There’s a lot of work that goes into creating muggle-worthy excuses - there’s a whole team that do just that at the Ministry.’

‘So how do you learn anything?’ Mr Evans asked, frowning in apparent curiosity. ‘Reading and arithmetic and so on?’

‘Home schooling… there’s special books - A Young Wizard’s Guide to Numbers, and special worksheets and things. My parents taught me, but you can get tutors and stuff. A friend of mine had a governess.’

‘How did they have time?’ asked Mrs Evans, startled. ‘I can’t imagine having enough hours in the day.’

James risked a shrug. ‘A lot more hours in the day when you can wave a wand to do the laundry.’

‘That has been helpful,’ Mrs Evans admitted, smiling at Lily again, who beamed back.

‘Plus, I was lucky - neither of my parents worked so I had all the-’

‘Neither of them worked?’ asked Mr Evans. He did not sound sharp or annoyed, but the surprise in his voice sent James into a mild panic. ‘Your father didn’t work?’

‘Oh - well - my dad owned a business, but then he sold it, a little bit at a time - I think he sold off his last share a few years ago. He was getting on a bit, you know - I was quite a late baby,’ he added awkwardly, and then immediately wished he had not said it.

‘No brothers or sisters?’ asked Mrs Evans sympathetically.

‘No, I was raised as an only child,’ said James, and then, before he could stop himself, one of his dad’s shit jokes was tumbling out of his mouth. ‘Which really annoyed my siblings.’

Thankfully, after a couple of seconds of silence as it sunk in, Mr Evans gave a spluttered chuckle.

Completely relieved that his joke hadn’t fallen flat and that Mr Evans was looking at him with an expression of surprised amusement rather than with a cold glare, James eased into the lunch, and so, apparently, did Mr Evans.

‘So - what sort of things did your parents teach you?’

A couple of hours later, Lily was walking with him back to the disapparation point. Realistically, her road was quiet and he could have vanished on leaving, but it was nice for them to walk hand in hand, at ease over it all.

‘I think my Dad really liked you - somehow he thought you were funny.’

‘It’s been known to happen,’ he said, grinning.

She was smiling back, her eyes bright and piercing. ‘I mean it, I know it was a little awkward at first, but I think they found you utterly charming - you handled Dad and his bookshelf very well.’

After the meal, possibly believing that a childhood of homeschooling meant that he would be particularly interested, Mr Evans had shown James his bookshelf and explained his methods of self improvement and constant learning.

‘I read a book a week - this is my latest. On shipbuilding.’

‘That sounds riveting,’ James had replied, and luckily Mr Evans had bellowed with laughter at the pun, rather than finding it sarcastic or rude. It was, as James’s own father had always taught him, all in the delivery and the cheeky smile. 

‘It’s such a relief,’ James told Lily, as they walked alongside the canal. ‘My parents loved you to bits, it would have been really embarrassing to go home and tell them that yours hated me.’

Lily laughed. ‘They were never going to hate you! They clearly think you’re very clever and interesting.’

He smiled at her, but softened slightly. ‘I’m sorry your sister ditched on us,’ he said quietly.

Lily’s face tensed a little. ‘Oh… yes, well… I’m sure she’ll come round. She wasn’t thrilled at the idea of a wizard coming for lunch.’

‘You must have had people round before,’ said James, surprised.

‘Of course! But Tuney always made her excuses then too. I just… I suppose I just hope she would know that this lunch was important.’

‘Was it?’ he said teasingly.

‘Yes,’ she said, with a great, feigned air of reluctance. ‘It’s extremely annoying, but I’ve grown quite fond of you.’

‘Stop, you’re making me blush.’

They had reached the apparation point, and he turned to her; she wrapped her arms around his waist and beamed up. ‘Well done,’ she whispered. ‘That’s both sets of parents met.’

‘All getting a bit serious, isn’t it?’ he whispered back, grinning. ‘They’ll be meeting each other next.’

She hissed jokingly. ‘Now you’re pushing it, I’m still not entirely convinced that all this charm isn’t an act.’

‘I am excellent at acting,’ he conceded, and she giggled. ‘I will see you on the train back to school tomorrow,’ he said, smiling down at her as he caressed her face. ‘Last term. Ever.’

She closed her eyes and scrunched up her nose rather adorably. ‘Don’t remind me, where did it all go? Just yesterday I was putting on that sorting hat, and I bet this term will go by even quicker and then that’s it! We’re adults!’

He saw it all, quite clearly - a life without uniforms and lessons and patrols up and down corridors. A life with Lily by his side, until the very end. He kissed her, slowly and softly, and he hoped that she understood, somehow, what he was unable to say. All the things he wanted that he was unable to describe.

They broke apart; her eyes remained closed for a moment, and he waited until they were open again, until he could see that remarkable green, before he spoke. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow,’ he said hoarsely. ‘We’ll be in the last carriage if you want to…’

‘I might pop by,’ she said slyly. She kissed him once more as a final goodbye, and then, his heart alight with happiness, he turned on the spot and vanished.


End file.
